Appointment with the internal med specialist is today (friday). Took a barrage of x rays (chest, abdomen, & leg that previously had MCT), which all look ok to our regular vet, new bloodwork is pretty much normal, platelets are a little high, cholesterol is high, and T4 is a hair low, everything else good. Haley still acting fine, and the nodes have even gotten smaller over the last week, but I know all about how this works by now (they get smaller, then bigger, then smaller....), so we're still going. Guess we'll find out what's going on soon enough, I'm prepared for bad news, but still holding out a little hope that maybe wierdo dog has some sort of unusual, curable or manageable condition.

Appointment went ok, specialist took several more needle aspirates of the enlarged nodes to send to the University of PA for cytology. Hopefully that'll at least let us know what we're dealing with. She said that it's unlikely to be an abscess or infection, or she'd be acting sick and have elevated WBC count. Could be fungal or autoimmune, but unfortunately those are less common causes for systemic LN enlargement than cancer, so we're going to rule out the most likely first. She said if it is cancer, lymphoma is more likely than mast cell, as it's unusual for a MCT like she had to spread further than regional LN, and she'd expect her spleen and other organs to be involved if it were that advanced, they feel and look ok on x rays (but I didn't do the ultrasound they offered, so can't be sure). She also said that pit bulls as a breed tend to be more prone to lymphoma They didn't give me an exact time frame on the cytology results, but said should have some results within a week. Haley thought it was a rather pleasant "spa" visit, schmoozed some doctors and techs that happened across her in the waiting area, and convinced the tech that returned her to me that she needed to be carried! She was distressed that the exam room we were in had no couch, and had to settle for scaling a rather unpadded chair and sitting on that- poor thing

Lymphoma Since she has multiple nodes enlarged, but isn't sick, she's at least a stage 3A (of 5, A being not sick, B being sick- in stages 4 and 5,there is other organ or bone marrow involvement, which we don't know, but can't rule out without further testing). Sucks. Still not inclined to do chemo, but going to talk to our regular vet today to see if he could do it and what he thinks...